- John Scott Haldane
John Scott Haldane CH (
May 3 1860 –March 14 /March 15 1936 ) was a Scottishphysiologist famous for intrepid self-experimenting which led to many important discoveries about the human body and the nature of gases.cite journal |last=Acott |first=C. |title=JS Haldane, JBS Haldane, L Hill, and A Siebe: A brief resume of their lives. |journal=South Pacific Underwater Medicine Society journal |volume=29 |issue=3 |date=1999 |issn=0813-1988 |oclc=16986801 |url=http://archive.rubicon-foundation.org/6016 |accessdate=2008-07-12 ] He locked himself in sealed chambers breathing lethal cocktails of gases while recording their effect on his mind and body. He visited the scenes of many mining disasters and investigated their causes. [ [http://www.amazon.co.uk/Suffer-Survive-Extreme-Life-Haldane/dp/0743285972 Amazon.co.uk: Suffer and Survive: The Extreme Life of J.S. Haldane: Martin Goodman: Books ] at www.amazon.co.uk] When the Germans used poison gas inWorld War I Haldane went to the front at the request of Britishsecretary of state ,Lord Kitchener and attempted to identify the gases being used. One outcome of this was his invention of the first gas mask [http://www.dmm.org.uk/archives/a_obit20.htm] . His son,J.B.S. Haldane became equally famous, both by extending his father's interest in diving and as a key figure in the development of themodern evolutionary synthesis .Biography
Haldane was born in
Edinburgh . He was the son of Robert Haldane and the grandson of the Scottish evangelistJames Alexander Haldane . His mother was Mary Elizabeth Burdon-Sanderson, the daughter of Richard Burdon-Sanderson and the granddaughter of Sir Thomas Burdon. His maternal uncle was the physiologistJohn Scott Burdon-Sanderson . He was the brother ofElizabeth Haldane ,William Stowell Haldane andRichard Burdon Haldane, 1st Viscount Haldane .Haldane attended
Edinburgh Academy ,Edinburgh University and theFriedrich Schiller University of Jena . He graduated in medicine at Edinburgh University in 1884.He married Louisa Kathleen Trotter and had two children; the scientist
J.B.S. Haldane and the authorNaomi Mitchison .He was Gifford Lecturer in the
University of Glasgow , Fellow ofNew College, Oxford , and Honorary Professor of theUniversity of Birmingham . Haldane received numerous honorary degrees. He was also President of the English Institution of Mining Engineers, a Companion of Honor of the British Court, a Fellow of theRoyal Society , a member of theRoyal College of Physicians and of theRoyal Society of Medicine .Haldane died in
Oxford at midnight on the night of March 14/March 15, 1936. He had just returned from a trip he had undertaken to investigate cases ofheat stroke in the oil refineries inPersia .Sir
Henry Newbolt wrote a poem called "For J. S. Haldane", published in his anthology "A Perpetual Memory and other Poems" in 1939.Accomplishments
Haldane was an international authority on
ether and respiration and the inventor of thegas-mask duringWorld War I . ("The Sciences and Philosophy: Gifford Lectures, University of Glasgow, 1927–28" by J.S. Haldane, Doubleday, Doran and Co., Inc., Garden City, NY, 1929)John Scott Haldane helped find out how to determine the regulation of breathing and discovered the
Haldane effect inhemoglobin . He was the founder of "The Journal of Hygiene ". In 1907 Haldane made adecompression apparatus to help make deep-sea divers safer and produced the firstdecompression tables after extensive experiments with animals. [cite journal |last=Boycott |first=A. E. |coauthors=G. C. C. Damant, J. S. Haldane. |title=Prevention of compressed air illness |journal=J. Hygiene |volume=8 |pages=342–443 |date=1908 |url=http://archive.rubicon-foundation.org/7489 |accessdate=2008-08-06 ] [The Timetables of Science|pages=411] He was also an authority on the effects ofpulmonary diseases , such assilicosis caused by inhalingsilica dust.Coal and Metal Mines
He investigated the principle of action of many different gases. He investigated numerous mining disasters, especially the toxic gases which killed most miners after
firedamp andcoal dust explosions. The toxic mixtures of gases found in mines includedafterdamp ,blackdamp andwhitedamp . He identifiedcarbon monoxide as the lethal constituent of afterdamp, the gas created bycombustion , after examining many bodies of miners killed in pit explosions. Their skin was coloured cherry-pink fromcarboxyhaemoglobin , the stable compound formed in the blood by reaction with the gas. It effectively displaces oxygen, and so the victim dies ofasphyxia . As a result of his research, he was able to design respirators for rescue workers. He tested the effect of carbon monoxide on his own body in a closed chamber, describing the results of his slow poisoning. In the late 1890s, he introduced the use of small mammals for miners to detect dangerous levels of carbon monoxide underground, either white mice or canaries. With a faster metabolism, they showed the effects of poisoning before gas levels became critical for the workers, and so gave an early warning of the problem. Thecanary in British pits was replaced in 1986 by the electronicgas detector .Haldane pioneered study of the reaction of the body to low air pressures, such as that experienced at high altitudes. He led an expedition to
Pike's Peak in 1913, which examined the effect of low atmospheric pressure on respiration.In addition to his work on mine atmospheres, he investigated the air in enclosed spaces such as wells and sewers. One surprising result of his analysis of the air in the sewers beneath the House of Commons was to show that the level of bacterial contamination was relatively low. During this research, he investigated fatalities of workmen in a sewer, and showed that
hydrogen sulfide gas was the culprit.Bibliography
* JS Haldane, "The Philosophical Basis of Biology: Donnellan Lectures, University of Dublin, 1930", Hodder and Stoughton Limited (1931).
* JS Haldane and JG Priestley, "Respiration", 2nd Ed, Oxford University Press (1935).References
* Martin Goodman, "Suffer and Survive: The Extreme Life of JS Haldane", Simon and Schuster (2007)
External links
* [http://www.giffordlectures.org/Author.asp?AuthorID=73 Biography of John Scott Haldane] on
Gifford Lectures site
* [http://www.dmm.org.uk/archives/a_obit20.htm Obituary]
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